I’ve been moaning about the wet weather lately – my regular running trails are a muddy mess – but my experience is nothing compared to that of farmers, the subject of this week’s Fix the Planet.
Anna Jackson and Janelle Conn are among the many readers interested in more sustainable farming, so I’ve decided to take a look at moss. Specifically the sphagnum family of mosses, and how one farmer is pioneering growing them as an innovative way to cut carbon emissions.
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Moss growing on Joe Stanley's farm. Photo: Beadamoss
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How can moss help us on climate change?
I’ve been chatting with Joe Stanley, who is the first UK farmer to try growing sphagnum in a working farm, rather than the controlled environment of a greenhouse. For the past two years, he has been running a trial with a firm called BeadaMoss to grow moss in a field usually used for grazing. As the moss grows, it locks up carbon. It could also be commercially grown and then used to restore peatlands, which are vital carbon stores, or sold at garden centres as an alternative to peat. “If you can save huge amounts of carbon by not digging up peat bogs and possibly reseeding some of the upland areas with this stuff, that’s a huge win,” says Stanley.
Why’s it needed?
The UK government’s advisers, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), recently spelled out how farming and land use needs to change to meet the country’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050. That included turning a fifth of farmland over to storing carbon and restoring at least half of peatlands. Many farmers have already successfully diversified beyond crops and livestock, as anyone who has holidayed in a converted barn will know. If government creates an incentive, carbon sequestration could be added to the list. “There will be opportunities going forward for some farmers to maybe just choose to be carbon farmers,” says Minette Batters, president of the UK’s National Farmers Union.
So how difficult is it grow moss on a farm?
A lot harder than in a greenhouse. “It’s been a real baptism of fire,” says Stanley. The first challenge has been the UK weather. Stanley notes the summer of 2018 was extremely dry – satellite images showed how the country turned from green to brown that year – while more recently it has been incredibly wet. Crows have also delighted in stealing the light, fluffy moss for their nests. “These are the sort of challenges, when nice classroom textbook theories clash with reality,” says Stanley.
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Farmer Joe Stanley and his dog Ted. Photo: Joe Stanley
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What are the results like so far?
The trial has at least another year to run before the moss is harvested. But BeadaMoss says growth so far has been very successful, despite the soil not being the peatland where the moss would usually grow. That shows it could be grown as a crop in the Fens, an area of east England with rich fertile soil, most of it peatland. The firm thinks each hectare should yield between 1500 and 3000 cubic metres of sphagnum, with each cubic metre worth about £30-50. That should make it a viable crop, says BeadaMoss, although it says changes to farming subsidies would encourage uptake. The moss on Stanley’s farm recorded net carbon uptake within a year. Every kilogram of sphagnum absorbs about 1.48kg of carbon dioxide.
What’s next?
The moss will be cut and harvested, and the site replanted. This harvest will be done by hand because of the small scale, but bigger projects could use agricultural equipment to save time and money. The most promising commercial use for the sphagnum today is for bagging it up and selling it to gardeners, to displace sales of peat compost – and the resulting carbon emissions from extracting it – says BeadaMoss. Or, of course, farmers could grow it to store carbon if a financial incentive to do so is introduced. Stanley says society needs to decide what to prioritise: food production or locking up carbon. The CCC thinks it is possible to do both, if people change their diets.
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1.
Land-based wind turbines are set to make a comeback. The UK government has proposed allowing onshore windfarms to compete for subsidies again, after ending them four years ago. Backers of floating offshore windfarms and solar farms would also be able to compete for a slice of the subsidies, if they can come in at a cheap enough cost.
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The number of people in the UK concerned about climate change has doubled in just three years. As the researchers behind the polling told me, that’s a remarkable increase in such a short space of time. Let’s hope politicians see the concern as a mandate for tougher action.
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Yesterday, the European Commission proposed the first European climate law, which would enshrine the bloc’s goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050 into law. Critics say it's not enough. They're right. But it's a serious start.
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I hope you also discovered a newfound love of moss. I should stress this is just one of many newsletters I’ll be doing on how we “Fix” farming, so do keep the ideas coming for that and any other climate change solutions you want to read about.
Email me on the address below to suggest a carbon-cutting technology or project. You can message me direct on Twitter and Facebook too.
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